urning faith and bright imagination fired
the medieval spirit. Brass plaques on
wool merchants' tombs at Northleach
entreat visitors to pray for their souls; modern
tourists take wax rubbings of the images.
the finest parish-church silver plate in the
British Isles, including a silver-gilt drinking
cup of Anne Boleyn's.
At Fairford church the treasure is stained
glass-an explosion of color on every side. No
other parish church in Great Britain has
retained its complete set of medieval glass.
Fairford wardens hid it not only from Crom
well, who smashed priceless windows all over
England as Papist idolatry, but also from
the bombs of World War II.
In what looks like a vote of confidence, the
Fairford wardens are not hiding the glass
from possible damage by the supersonic Con
corde being built and tested about a mile
away. The world's airlines are watching this
Anglo-French enterprise cautiously, reluctant
to order so controversial a vehicle. But the
Cotsallers of Fairford welcome the future to
their ancient backyard, and there was rejoic
ing in the town when, last September, a pre
production Concorde model built in France
flew Washington to Paris in 3 hours and 33
minutes, halving the Atlantic's width.
Fairford's neighbors in the south Cotswolds
are also eager to join in the technology of the
modern world. In the Stroud valleys many
tall old stone cloth mills, mellowed into
860
Alchemist of color, Edward Payne (above)
restores the subtle poetry of stained glass. In a
15th-century window at Fairford (right), Satan
-h is head a gaping fish, his belly a growling
face-swallows the damned.
beauty, work on-housing light industries,
from small pianos to hairpins.
A few mills even produce cloth. In Stroud,
Lodgemore Mills occupies a site athwart the
River Frome, where cloth has been made
since the 13th century. With modern power
and machinery, it continues the Cotswold tra
dition of producing only the finest cloth. Cots
wold mills made scarlet for the old British
Army; today Lodgemore Mills produces Scar
let No. 3 for the uniforms of the Guards, and
a deep blue for officers of the Navy. "Prince
Philip was married in our cloth," Ian Bear
park, one of the managers, told me.
Young Cotsallers Seek Work Elsewhere
Such light industries helped keep the Cots
wolds' unemployment rate down to a mere
1.5 percent in 1973, but the big factors in that
record are negative. Because of the high cost
of housing, decline of quarrying, and the loss
of farm jobs to mechanization, more employ
able people, mostly the young, are leaving the
Cotswolds than are coming in.
The rich retirees and magnate commuters,
many well past youth, who displace young
Cotsallers, are giving the Cotswolds the aura
of an elegant old folks' home. Though their